Dagestan Islamists Were Uneasy About Boston Bombing Suspect

By

Alan Cullison

May 9, 2013 7:26 p.m. ET

MAKHACHKALA, Russia—When Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived here in the capital of the Dagestan region to get in touch with his roots early last year, one of his first stops was a mosque known for its adherence to the fundamentalist Salafist strain of Islam.

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Islamist Makhmud Nidal, second from right above, met with Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev several times in the Dagestan region early last year, a Russian official says, before dying in a shootout with security forces on the outskirts of Makhachkala in May 2012.
NewsTeam

But Mr. Tsarnaev, who a year later allegedly planted the Boston Marathon bombs with his brother Dzhokhar and died after a shootout with police, got a cool reception from some of the Islamists he hoped to bond with. He greased his hair with olive oil and wore dark eye makeup, apparently in an effort to affect contemporary jihadist fashion, according to Mohamad Magomedov, who struck up a friendship with him at the mosque. That look isn't popular in more-traditional Dagestan.

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Tamerlan Tsarnaev
The Lowell Sun/Associated Press

While Mr. Tsarnaev did find a circle of friends, some congregants at the Salafist mosque dismissed him as strange. Others said they feared his brashness would attract even more attention to them from Russian authorities.

"There are some people who take things too far," said one congregant. "Everyone is being watched."

For several weeks, investigators in the U.S. have been looking into whether Mr. Tsarnaev's six-month sojourn in Dagestan last year further radicalized his views, connected him to known jihadists or provided him with the explosives expertise to plant the bombs that on April 15 killed three people near the finish line of the Boston Marathon and injured more than 200.

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But Mr. Tsarnaev's friends and family in the U.S. say his religiosity was already fully formed by the time he took his trip to Dagestan in February 2012. And people who spent time with him during the visit, as well as Russian security officials who watched the mosque closely, say that if the brash Mr. Tsarnaev went to Dagestan seeking to earn his jihadist stripes, he didn't get very far.

"He attracted a lot of attention because it was clear he was from somewhere else, and he didn't try to hide that," said Mr. Magomedov. "His attitude was, 'that's the way I am—so what?' "

Mr. Tsarnaev's father, Anzor, said the style issues nearly boiled over into a fist fight after some congregants accused Tamerlan of playing dress-up.

In Dagestan, the tensions between Islamist insurgents and the government are very real. Mr. Tsarnaev's visit coincided with a push against rebels by Russian security forces, who during the past year and a half wiped out several fighter groups they blamed for several terrorist attacks across the Caucasus region and in Russia.

The conservative mosque Mr. Tsarnaev attended on Kotrova Street was founded by Nadirshakh Khachilaev, who aided the current head of al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, during a 1997 trip to Dagestan.

Mr. Khachilaev himself was shot to death outside his home in 2003, a killing that Islamists say was ordered by security forces, but that Russian authorities say is unsolved. The mosque, to this day named after him as the al-Nadiria mosque, has grown to become a meeting place for Salafists and, security officials say, extreme Islamists whose comings and goings are closely monitored.

Penetrating the world of Islamist insurgents in Dagestan can be difficult, since its members are highly suspicious of infiltrators. The Islamist underground in Russia's Caucasus is focused on creating an independent Islamic state and doesn't share the global ambitions of some international terror groups. Its leaders, who say their targets are Russian, have publicly disassociated themselves from the Boston attack.

In Makhachkala, Mr. Tsarnaev met several times with Makhmud Nidal, a member of a rebel group that operated in the area, an official close to the situation said. Mr. Nidal was on the run from Russian police, but Mr. Tsarnaev managed to meet with him secretly at an apartment in the Separatorny neighborhood of Makhachkala, said an official who saw the security-service dossier on Mr. Nidal.

The dossier reported the date, address and apartment number where the meeting took place, and that an informant reported that the two discussed ways that Mr. Tsarnaev might be able to help his rebel group. The dossier indicated that Mr. Tsarnaev offered to act as a financial go-between for an organization based in the U.S., the official said.

Mr. Tsarnaev's conversations with Mr. Nidal appear to have been overtaken by events, officials said. In May 2012, Russian security services caught up with Mr. Nidal, killing him in a shootout at an apartment on the outskirts of Makhachkala.

Russian officials said Mr. Tsarnaev also was in touch, most likely over the Internet, with another member of the underground. William Plotnikov, a Russian-born Canadian citizen who had converted to Islam and came to Dagestan in 2010, was a boxer, like Mr. Tsarnaev. Mr. Plotnikov was detained and interrogated by Russian security forces in late 2010, but released after a few days and moved to a remote village.

Officials say no evidence has surfaced that he met Mr. Tsarnaev in Dagestan last year. In July 2012, Mr. Plotnikov was killed along with a group of other suspected militants in the forest outside his village in a firefight with Russian security forces.

Vitaly Plotnikov, Mr. Plotnikov's father, said in an interview this week that Canadian investigators recently told him they haven't found any association between his son and Mr. Tsarnaev. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators have searched the son's computer hard drive and told him "we don't have any evidence that they were in touch," he said.

Mr. Tsarnaev's other contacts in Dagestan were avowedly less radical. He was regularly in touch with his third cousin, Magomed Kartashov, who is leader of an Islamist organization, Union of the Just, and spent several days with him in the north Dagestan city of Kizlyar last year, said Mr. Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat.

Mr. Kartashov's group is legal and publicly renounces violence. Still, Russian security services are questioning him about his relationship with Mr. Tsarnaev, said a person close to Mr. Kartashov, who was arrested last week by police in Kizlyar for leading what they said was an illegal rally at a wedding. He is being held on charges of fighting with police, the person said.

"I was very happy he was spending time with him," said Mr. Tsarnaev's mother. "Kartashov is a good man. He is against war, against killing, and that's what his organization is about."

Mr. Tsarnaev's visit to Dagestan ended abruptly last summer. Just two days after the raid that killed Mr. Plotnikov, he departed Russia, leaving behind a new Russian passport; acquiring the passport was one reason he had made the trip, his parents said.

Mr. Magomedov, the friend from the mosque, said the bombing in Boston has puzzled people in Dagestan. "People here can't understand the logic of it," he said. "He was not radicalized here, there was no big change in his mentality," he said. "He left here the same as he came."

Corrections & Amplifications In July 2012, Mr. Plotnikov was killed along with a group of other suspected militants in the forest outside his village in a firefight with Russian security forces. A previous version of this article said he was killed in June 2012.

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